The present invention relates to devices for facilitating transportation, storage, identification and/or other manipulation of cartridges, magazines, cassettes and/or analogous receptacles for photographic film, especially receptacles for exposed but undeveloped photographic roll film.
When a customer delivers or mails a receptacle with exposed photographic film to a dealer in photographic materials or another agency which accepts films for shipment or delivery to a developing laboratory, the receptacle is normally placed into an envelope a portion of which is detached and handed to the customer as a receipt. The receipt is provided with a serial number a duplicate of which appears on the major portion of the envelope and the dealer often inscribes the date of anticipated completion of the order. The envelope is shipped to the processing laboratory where the film is developed and prints made therefrom, whereupon the envelope with the prints and/or developed film therein is returned to the dealer for shipment to or for pickup by the customer. The envelope is further provided with an encoded dealer identification number so that the laboratory can return the completed order to the proper party, and such envelope may be provided with a second detachable portion which is kept by the dealer to serve as a receipt and as a means for facilitating the identification of an order which is not returned to the dealer in time.
A drawback of the just described envelopes is that their manipulation necessitates a large amount of manual labor which contributes to the cost of development and print making. For example, a peson at the laboratory must manually remove a receptacle from the envelope in order to determine the nature of the receptacle and the type of film therein. Moreover, an envelope often contains two or more receptacles for exposed film which is highly undesirable, especially when the envelopes are processed automatically or semi-automatically. The situation is aggravated if the dealer inserts two or more difficult receptacles into the same envelope.